The SEC’s loyalty to Ethereum is higher than its loyalty to Ripple’s XRP tokens. That was the conclusion reached by the team at the Deaton law firm, led by founder John Deaton.
Deaton Law Firm Claims SEC Lawsuit is Unfavourable Toward XRP
In Deaton’s opinion posted on December 27, according to him, on December 13, 2017, William Hinman, who was then the head of the corporate finance department of the regulator, and Joseph Lubin, CEO of ConsenSys, held a meeting that “did not concern the Ethereum ICO”, but became “the beginning of a very mutually beneficial ‘union’”.
Dixon, the founder of Dunton Law Festivities on January 25, 2018, stated that SEC Chairman Jay Clayton met with Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to convene selected industry participants and present a paper on how regulators should deal with digital assets.
Deaton recalled that as of January 2018, XRP was “the second-largest crypto-asset by market capitalization.” According to online archives, the token was next to Bitcoin (CoinGecko) as of December 31, 2017, but was replaced by ETH on January 2, 2018. However, as the author of the thread pointed out, Ripple representatives were not invited to join the industry group.
It includes representatives of the crypto industry, according to Deaton, and is partially connected to the Ethereum ecosystem. The attorney also cited a previously announced statement that Hinman received $15 million from Simpson Thacher – whose chairman is a board member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. ConsenSys’s interests are, according to him, represented by the Clayton-affiliated law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Deaton also mentioned that Sullivan & Cromwell facilitated the acquisition of Quorum (JPMorgan Chase’s blockchain platform) by ConsenSys, a direct competitor of Ripple.
He added that this information became known four months prior to the filing of the lawsuit against Ripple. Deaton also mentioned hedge fund One River Asset Management, which invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Clayton joined its advisory board after leaving the SEC.
According to the Deaton Law Firm, Hinman allegedly became Dixon’s partner in a $2.2 billion crypto fund. A16z launched a fund with assets of this size in June 2021.
SEC Officials That Filed Ripple Lawsuit Allegedly Link to Ethereum
The Fox Business Television Channel had previously published a large-scale investigation into the case of the US Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple. The reporter concluded that the employees of the department that filed the lawsuit may be linked to Ethereum.
In August, despite regulatory attempts to deny the motion, Ripple managed to get Hinman to testify in court.
Speaking at the DC Fintech Week virtual conference on Thursday, October 21, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that Ethereum has received the green light to outperform his company’s XRP token.
XRP is the second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization as of late December 2017. At the time of writing, it slipped to seventh place, and Ethereum has since maintained second place.
